


Broken Circle

by fuzzyalarmclock



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzyalarmclock/pseuds/fuzzyalarmclock
Summary: He'd seen it for weeks, how she was pulling away, away from feelings, away from anything that hurt or was too hard. He tried to get her to talk, he tried coaxing and cajoling and providing vast quantities of food, he tried waiting out her silence, but nothing he did made it any better.Post-season 7.





	Broken Circle

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Title comes from the Sam Phillips' song.
> 
> I like to think Write Me Home, Broken Circle, and To Lose You, To Keep You are a shared universe.
> 
> I've been feeling blocked on To Lose You, To Keep You, so I was hoping a little Lorelai/Luke angst would help.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.

***

Lorelai loved hotels. When she was little, her parents would plan occasional trips into the city to take her to a play or a museum. She cared less about the elaborate exhibits and the people on stage than she did the hotel where they spent the night. She loved the dark, oak-paneled, important-looking lobbies and the soft white sheets and the pillow mints and being somewhere that wasn't her parents' stuffy mansion.

When she was 9 or 10, she started lobbying for her own room on whatever vacation her parents were planning. She loved waking up on her own, crawling out of bed, and flinging open the curtains to see the view, usually a spectacular one, of their destination.

As an adult, some of the charms have slipped away. Most hotels don't offer a turndown service or pillow mints. Most hotel lobbies cater to the business guest, which no longer means dark, oak-paneled, important-looking lobbies, but sleek, modern design supplemented by a business center. There's no character. (It's one reason why she's glad she's in the inn business. Inns still have character, while hotels have become corporate conglomerations.) But she still loves waking up on her own and flinging open the curtains to see the view. The only difference is now drinking really bad hotel coffee is also part of the equation.

They were the places she ran to. First, when she was sixteen and showed up on the doorstep of the Independence Inn. Then when she decided not to marry Max. It's how she finds herself in an inn near Salem after having a fight with Luke. Not just any fight, but a blow out argument probably signaling the end of their rekindled relationship.

Needing to get out of her own head, Lorelai spends the afternoon in the Salem Witch Museum. It tells the story of the witch trials, but the place is straight out of Stars Hollow with its cheesy wax figures and dramatic voice over. She wishes Rory was there with her to mock it. Even though it is infinitely mockable, she takes her time in the museum, even staying to see the pressing of Giles Corey again, before wandering through the gift shop. As she pulls her phone out of her bag, she makes a guess as to how many voicemails and missed calls there will be and from whom. _Rory, two voicemails, four missed calls. Luke, five missed calls. No voicemails. Possibly one or two from Sookie._

She misjudged on all accounts. Rory called her six times, leaving nearly as many messages. Luke left her three voicemails and called 10 times. Sookie called three times and left one very hysterical voicemail. She can't listen to Luke's yet, but she calls Rory back. “Mom! What the hell? Where _are_ you?”

Rory is currently in the middle of Iowa and Lorelai isn't sure she wants to know how her daughter found out about her flight from Stars Hollow. “Hon, it's not as terrible as you think...”

“Luke called me about 15 times, so I'm pretty sure it's _exactly_ as terrible as I think.” Her daughter audibly sighs. “Where. Are. You?”

“In Salem. I figured it was the perfect place to atone for my wicked ways. Or to not atone for them.” She presses a hand to her forehead. Honestly, what a mess she was. “I'm waiting for them to burn me at the stake and put me out of my misery.” On her walk, she occasionally passed middle-aged woman dressed in varying degrees of wiccan garb. Salem actually might out Stars Hollow Stars Hollow.

“Well, I need you to figure out your Samantha nose twitch back in Stars Hollow because Darrin is freaking out!”

“Is this _Bewitched_ the series we're talking about or ill-advised Nora Ephron film?”

“Hey, the film is underrated! Nicole Kidman is charming, but Will Ferrell was a terrible choice, which is _not_ the point of this conversation.” Rory is angry and it is not in defense of Ephron's _Bewitched_. “Luke _loves_ you. Like really loves you, over the moon, has been pining for years, will do anything to make you happy, makes me want to throw up kind of loves you.”

“Luke shouldn't have gotten you involved.”

“Mom, I'm on your side, but I can still be on your side and care about Luke.”

“Then you have to trust that we'll fix it. I appreciate your concern, babe, but the two of us have to figure this out. Me and Luke.” If they could fix it. If they even wanted to. Things had been great at first, but then everything became hard. She is still reeling from the divorce and she doesn't know how to talk to him about it.

“Okay,” Rory says hesitantly. “For what it's worth, you seemed the happiest with Luke.” Lorelai's chest seizes up and her eyes fall closed. She can feel the weight of his arm slung over her hip in bed at night, the gentle pressure of his fingers at the small of her back as they danced together for the first time, the way her name sounds on his lips, the grin he seems to reserve just for her. He does make her happy, in those ways and a million others.

“I know,” she says finally. “I love you, kid. I'm sorry your mother is born to run. Hey, maybe Springsteen will write a song about me.”

“Let me know how things turn out, okay?”

“I'll call you from the coven.”

“ _Mom_.”

“Bye!” Rory's unknowing emotional blackmail has worked and Lorelai looks at the phone in her hand for a long moment as she considers calling Luke.

*

It shouldn't surprise him that Lorelai ran away. The only surprise should have been that it had taken her this long. He knows her penchant for leaving. His life was full of people who were always leaving: his parents, Rachel, Liz, Jess. But Lorelai, despite her habit, had never run from him in this way, never needed to distance herself by putting hundreds of miles between them.

He never understood it with Rachel or Liz. Stars Hollow was enough for him. Everyone knew it. He'd heard Patty and Sookie and Babette and Jackson joke about it to one another when they thought he was out of earshot. _We're going to have to bury him in that diner._ He couldn't even disagree with them. It was true.

With Lorelai, he was starting to understand why she chose to run. Away from her parents. Away from Max. Away from their engagement. Now, this time, away from him.

He'd seen it for weeks, how she was pulling away, away from feelings, away from anything that hurt or was too hard. He tried to get her to talk, he tried coaxing and cajoling and providing vast quantities of food, he tried waiting out her silence, but nothing he did made it any better. He prided himself on fixing things, but he couldn't figure out how to fix this. She was busy erecting her walls and babbling on about whatever else she could think of, anything to distract herself from the dark corners of her mind, but he saw it, in her eyes, at the edge of her mouth when she smiled.

He was starting to understand because he felt it too. The complete terror that ripped through him at one a.m. The tingling in his hands and feet as he stood at the counter in the diner and tried not to outwardly panic. The leaden, heavy feeling in his chest and legs as he walked to Lorelai's. Sometimes even, he thought of leaving, of getting as far away as possible.

They were both scared. Him pushing her until she snapped. The ugly words. Walking away. Realizing that might have been it.

*

_I said I didn't want to talk about this._

_Lorelai, you have to talk to me. It's what I'm here for._

_No, I can't. Not about this._

_Why not?_

_Because._

_So you're going to sit there and not talk to me and feel sorry for yourself instead? That's not good for you._

_Oh, because you were always the expert on that, weren't you? Red meat is going to kill you. Coffee isn't good for your immune system. Max isn't good for you. Chris isn't good for you. Well, maybe you aren't good for me either!_

*

The inn where she's staying has shelves full of books, mostly by area authors. A lot of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, and Alcott. In high school, they were in the middle of reading _The Scarlet Letter_ when Lorelai found out she was pregnant. She considered sewing a glittery and bedazzled P onto her school uniform. Taking down the book from the shelf, Lorelai wanders up to her room and falls asleep reading. By the time she wakes, it's past nine and she's missed dinner, which would usually send her to the phone book to see if any place close by delivers, but tonight, food feels less important.

If she knows Luke at all, he's probably in his truck, barreling towards Salem. There's no chance of her going back to sleep anyway, so she stays up, waiting. She must doze off again because she's awakened by a strange sound, like metal on metal, and somewhere his voice, "Lorelai." It takes another moment to orient herself. The sound happens again, followed by his voice, louder this time. “Lorelai!” Is he throwing rocks at her window?

She opens the bedroom window, half expecting to be asked to let her hair down or to find him on bended knee. "What are you doing here? I think we're a little old to be playing Montagues and Capulets.” Seeing him standing in the yard, wearing a blue flannel, she almost forgets why she ran away. He's Luke. He's home.

“I'm pulling a John Cusack. Will you come down, please?" Lorelai smiles at his attempted reference. He doesn't know movies, but he's trying.

She unlocks the front door of the inn, pulling her sweater tighter around her, and meets him out on the lawn. "Lloyd Dobler."

"What?"

"Pulling a John Cusack. You mean in _Say Anything_. The character's name is Lloyd Dobler."

"Right." He waits for her to say something but she's uncharacteristically quiet as she stands there, arms wrapped around herself. Her face is bare of makeup and the skin under her eyes looks puffy. Luke wonders if she's been crying. “You left.” It's not supposed to sound accusatory but as it lays in the air between them, it does.

She shifts her head to one side, lifting her eyes to his, and moves her shoulders up into a slight shrug. “I didn't think you would want to see me.”

“And you didn't think I was going to notice that you disappeared?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

Lorelai curses herself for going to the diner so often. It made it much easier for everyone to keep tabs on her. She should be more enigmatic. “You called Rory.”

“Yeah, I'm sorry about that,” he takes in a deep breath before continuing. “I panicked. You didn't come in this morning and I walked to your house, but the Jeep was gone, so I thought you were already at work, but then I called Sookie and she said you hadn't come in and I thought about calling your mother, but I figured she would have no clue what I was talking about and I wasn't sure if she even knew we were back together, so I didn't want to open _that_ can of worms and my last resort was calling Rory.”

He's the only person who has ever chased her, even if sometimes it took him a little while to catch up. Max hadn't done that. Or Chris.

The realization makes her feel like she can breathe again and a thousand words bubble up in the back of her throat, but she doesn't say any of them. Him showing up here, that fact alone, makes this a little less difficult, eases her fears slightly, and allows her to unclench her fists which are drawn tight in her sweater. It's not easy with Luke, at least not as easy as she wants it to be, but it reminds her of a saying her father used to recite when she was younger. _The easy things aren't worth having and the hard ones are worth the fight._

She takes a step closer and reaches for him. He slips his fingers through hers. "I couldn't be there."

Brow furrows, jaw clenches. "Are you going to run away every time we have a fight?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. I don't really know how to explain it." She's not good at this. Lorelai wishes there were a way for him to know without her having to explain it. He has always been surprisingly good at reading her, good at listening, good at saying the things she needed to hear, good at meaning them. A shaky sigh.

"Try me, That's what I'm here for."

"I just felt...bad at being a person. I've been feeling like that more and more lately and I don't know how to stop it. It makes me itchy, like I need to get out of my own skin. I'm sorry," she deflates. "You deserve more than all of this."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because you do, Luke. You deserve more than having to put up with me and try to puzzle out my brain and clean up my messes..." His fingers are still laced through hers, but he reaches his other hand up to where hers is gripping her sweater tightly. He slowly gets her to unclench her fingers and presses the lightest kiss to the inside of her wrist.

As he raises his head, he catches her eye. "Maybe I'm right where I want to be. You ever think of that?"

She doesn't know what to say, but she takes another step towards him and he wraps her into his arms. She relaxes against him and his hands rub her back gently, soothingly. Sobs rise up in her chest. "I'm scared, Luke. I'm terrified of messing everything up again and I couldn't stand doing that to you again. I was devastated before...I can't do it again."

"Shhh," he soothes. "Shhh. I know. It's going to be okay."

"How can you say that?" Her voice is garbled, both by the crying and by the fact that her face is buried in his neck.

"Because I believe it. Because I love you."

"You shouldn't love me, Luke,” she says bitterly. “I make your life hell." But she presses into him further, hoping his mere presence, the warmth of his weight against her will be enough to vanquish the burrowing uncertainty in her gut.

"Too bad. I do. I tried to fight it for a long time, but much like your demands for coffee and terrible artery clogging food, you couldn't be denied."

This actually makes Lorelai laugh. He feels her take in a deep breath and exhale against him. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. "I'm sorry I ran away."

"It's okay. As long as next time you invite me to come." He takes a step back, resisting the urge to cup her face in his hands, to brush away the tears.

She casts a sidelong glance at him, trying to ascertain whether he's joking. "Really?"

He raises his eyebrows. "Really."

"You're a good one, Luke Danes. The best, in fact." She smiles and he's reminded again of how much he's willing to do to make her happy.

He rocks back on his heels, a smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. "I expect to hear a lot more of that to make up for the running away from me thing."

"Oh, really?" Lorelai's eyes widen and she takes a step into him again, her arms wrapping around his middle, her head tucked against his collarbone.

"Mmmhmm," he murmurs into her hair.

*

She leads him upstairs, his eyebrows raising at _The Scarlet Letter_ on her bed. “It turns out Hester Prynne and I have a lot in common.” Lorelai attempts to joke, but he hears the dryness in her voice, knows something strikes a nerve there.

“The having a kid out of wedlock thing?”

She drops down onto the bed, keeping her eyes averted from his. “The adultery thing.”

He doesn't know what to say. “Lorelai, that's-”

“That's what it was, Luke. I cheated on you with Christopher.”

“Yes, cheated on. It wasn't adultery. We weren't married.”

“We were as good as.”

He drops his head to his chest, defeated. “But we weren't.” She's sitting on the bed, hands in her lap, and he takes a step towards her. He takes her hands in his. “You have to forgive yourself.” Or this will never work, he thinks.

“I don't think I can do that. I don't know how.” Luke sees the exhaustion in her eyes. For weeks, she's been trying to work out the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that are whirling around in her head. So far, she's only come up with more ways to beat herself up.

Luke squats down. He wants to be able to see her face when he says this. “You do know how. I've seen you do it.”

She slips her hand out of his and places it on his shoulder, needing to feel his solidity. “There's just so much...mess in my brain.”

“I know. But you have me.” He starts to stand again, but leans down to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “Did you bring pajamas?”

She nods, shuffles over to the bag she brought, and disappears into the bathroom for a few minutes. When she comes back out, Luke has pulled down the covers on the bed. Even though he didn't think far enough ahead to bring a change of clothes, he's taken off his flannel and jeans, leaving him in a thin grey t-shirt and boxers.

“Lie down with me?” Lorelai does as she's told, curving her body towards his, curling up so she can rest her head on his chest. “Those first few months we were together...” She remembered, when everything was heady, delicious, and special. When they told her each other things they had been waiting to say for years. When they told each other secrets. “...you told me about all the moments you thought--how did you put it?”

A smile tugs at her lips. “All the moments I thought, there's something about this guy. All the moments I thought maybe.” She traces her fingertips across the worn fabric of his t-shirt.

They're both quiet, both lying there thinking about those early days together, both thinking about what she had said. “Do you remember them?”

“Of course.” She says without hesitating, because that list kept her alive (and tore her apart) those months after Chris left, the months before she wound her way back to him. “Does calling you Duke for two years count?” She jokes, a laugh escaping her lips, but she's serious the next moment, remembering. “When I broke my leg doing yoga and you made sure Rory and I were fed.” He almost interrupts her to say he always makes sure of that, but he knows what she means, so he lets her continue. “When you came to her caterpillar funeral.”

“It was a beautiful service,” he murmurs.

“The night we were picking out paint colors for the diner. The time I made you bid on my picnic basket, when you drove me to the hospital when my dad had his heart thing, when you showed up at the hospital when my dad had his second heart thing--”

“The second time doesn't count because we had already been together.”

“It does count, Luke.” Despite the awful dissolution of their engagement, despite that Chris might be there, he brought her food. He showed up when it mattered most. “You were always there. Familiar and understanding and just...you. It was you.”

He brushes his fingers through her hair and a shiver ripples through her body. “You know...I'm scared, too.”

“You are?” Her wide blue eyes study his face.

“Of course. I'm scared of losing you, of losing us, of...” Lorelai reaches up and puts her hand on his cheek, her thumb rubbing softly over his stubble.

“I know. It's going to be okay.” She echoes his earlier words. Only now, she finds herself believing them. She presses kisses along his jawline until he kisses her fully, pressing her back into the pillows. Lorelai revels in the weight of him against her. He holds her like he's never letting go and like he's afraid he might break her all at once. “I'll do better about the whole talking thing,” she whispers against his skin. “I love you.”

He doesn't really believe her when she says she'll talk to him. He's spent enough time trying to fix people to know he can't change her. She might run again. He might chase her. They will talk and not talk and come back together in the ways they always do.

_fin_

 


End file.
